Martin Lewis has issued a warning to millions of mobile phone users after EE confirmed it is bringing back EU roaming charges.
In a reply on Twitter, the MoneySavingExpert founder said more telecom companies could follow suit in reintroducing the fees for holidaymakers in Europe.
Tweeting ahead of the EE announcement, Martin said: “News. I'm hearing, later today, EE will be announcing its reintroducing EU roaming charges from Jan.”
“This isn't about the O2 fair use discussion earlier, this looks like it may be full blown charges that wouldn’t have been allowed under EU rules. More when we know.”
One follower replied: “The rest will follow I presume Martin?“
Mr Lewis replied: “Yes this is the first real break in the ranks and sadly others will likely follow, but I doubt it will be universal, I suspect some will keep their EU roaming as it is now.
“Three for example always made a great play of its roaming packages and it was to its competitive advantage.“
It comes after EE confirmed it would bring in a flat fee of £2 per day for customers to use their phones in 47 countries, starting from January 2022.
The charges will apply to customers who sign up to a new contract or renew their existing one after July 7, 2021 - unless they are on one of its specific roaming tariffs “Smart” and “Full Works” - and existing customers who upgrade after this date.
Meanwhile, O2 and Three have separately announced plans to cut their “fair use” limits for data roaming.
Customers who use more than 25GB of data a month in Europe will pay an extra £3.50 per gigabyte from August 2.
Three has also revealed that its “fair use” limit for data while in the EU will reduce from 20GB per month to 12GB, from July 1.
Data usage over 12GB, up to your current allowance, will remain be subject to fee of 0.3p per megabyte.
So far, Vodafone and Voxi have both confirmed they have no plans to change their current mobile roaming policies.
BT Mobile customers, which are part of the same group as EE, are also unaffected by the changes.
